Pictures Of Koifla 2004

OKay, the anticipated pics from our KoiFla 2004 show have arrived!! Terry had the time to send them to me. First to say, it was in the beautiful Fairchaild Tropical Gardens in Coral Gables for the first time this year, and thanks to the show the garden broke his alltime attendance record for a weekend from 500 to around 1000 visitors!!.... .....
By RanchuGirl

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	First picture is a wonderfully done watergarden display, dug up by the vendor in mere two days. Complete with waterfall, a few waterplants, rocks, and even a fake turtle somewhere!! All you need is the fish to put into!
	Here we have the general koi show area, with blue ponds set up where the koi to be shown are held in. Each owner has his own pond, so there is no mixing of koi from different sources going on, therefore there is a lot less chance of any spreading illness going on....The tanks you see are only a few of the many more that were around that day!
	Here is a closer look at the show area, with particular interest in a specific koi, so it seems! To the right is Ron, from which I happen to buy a huge comet at the end of the day, together with another club member and his son.....
	How about some fish now? This is a gorgeous calico ryukin, who made Grand Champion this year and belongs to Lester Berkow, a longtime koi judge!! Isn't he a beauty?
	Here we have the Reserve Grand Champion, a stunning Wakin, also belonging to Lester....I hope mine looks so good in a few years!
	This chocolate oranda is one of my own fish, which I happen to buy just a couple of weeks earlier from John Cheung. He made first in his class (The oranda, not John Cheung, ) He still has some white fuzz on the side of his head, I just took him out of quarantine that day, but the stuff is healed up now....
	Here is a view onto part of the vendor area. There were quite a few vendors coming from all over the place, we had Neighborhood fish farm, Koi INternational, NishigiKoi (hope I spelled that one right), Koi by Keirin, Blackwater Creek, a water garden company, Summerland farm, I think I saw Aquatic Ecosystems, and a few others....
	This is a view of our booth. To the right is Ruthie Cusick, Terry's wife, as well as a few other nice club members helping with the sale of items like a great koi calendar, wind chimes, pins, t-shirts, as well as holding an hourly raffle with superb prizes to win, which you can see part of on the picture...There were koi food an conditioners, video tapes, and all kinds of other goodies. There were plenty of new members applications that day as well!
	Oh, and this is the beauty who won the Jumbo award!! This comet, raised in a pond with other koi and 6 years old now, belongs to Ron, who sold it to me at the end of the day! That whopper measures a mere 15 inches (tail included) and lives now with a few of our koi in a 700 gl pond.
	Here is the vendor spot from John Cheung, and his company Koi International. John is the guy to the right, and he had the most crowd around during both days!! He had quite a selection of koi and goldfish, big and small, and my alltime favorite was a perfect tancho koi, around 10-12 inches, for 500$. If we didn't plan to leave our money in Orlando in March, we would have bought a koi from him. John Cheung is now a new supplier of Fish-express.com, so anybody ordering from them has a real chance to get some fish from John!! I have bought quite a few over the years from him, mostly bigger babies!
	And last, but not least, what I would call the Jumper Guard that day!! Someone brought a gorgeous shubunkin to the show, but the darling decided that he didn't like the show tank too much, so out he went half a dozen times. I myself while "on duty" picked him off of the floor 3 times! As you can tell, Jumper Guard is not all to interesting!